by Lisa Suzanne
They did finally leave—all except for Judy. She helped clean up the random plates people had left lying around. She wiped down the counters. She scrubbed the dishes in the sink and handed them to me to dry. She wrapped up the leftovers and marked them in our refrigerator. I wouldn’t eat them. I was going back to school tomorrow. I couldn’t stay another day in this house without my mom.
“I need to get out of this dress,” I said. I thought of the kind words of the stranger from the day before again and felt like he might’ve been right. Maybe it wasn’t my fault, though the guilt weighed heavily upon me, and the one person who I needed to say it to me didn’t.
It’s not that I thought my dad blamed me, exactly, but he barely looked at me the entire day. He was stuck in a pool of his own depression just at the exact time I needed him to be there for me.
I tossed the dress on the floor and pulled on my favorite sweatpants and baggy sweatshirt. I headed back downstairs to thank Judy for everything and say goodnight to my dad when I heard the floorboard in the family room creak.
I turned that way instead of the kitchen. The second I peeked around the corner, I wished I hadn’t.
I halted dead in my tracks.
I stopped and stared for a minute in total disbelief.
I was certain my eyes were playing tricks on me.
I was tired, I was sad, I was hurting. I was surely imagining things. I rubbed my eyes, smearing my make-up in the process, but the image in front of me didn’t go away.
Judy’s arms were laced around my father’s neck, and his mouth was all over hers.
They were kissing.
And not just kissing as in a friend comforting a friend. There was passion in this kiss. He wrapped his arms around Judy’s waist and clung to her like he never wanted to let go. Their kiss seemed to deepen as I watched, and I felt sick to my stomach.
So sick, in fact, that I crept as quietly and quickly as I could back up the stairs, ran to the bathroom, and vomited.
And then I packed my shit in my bag. I wasn’t going to hang around here to watch the two of them fuck when my mom wasn’t even cold in her grave yet.
What a goddamn betrayal.
What a weak, selfish man.
What a horrible, horrible friend.
Fuck both of them.
I grabbed my bag and ran down the stairs, making as much noise as I possibly could to give plenty of warning announcing my arrival.
“I decided to go back tonight,” I said.
My dad and Judy stood in the family room, both of them panting with swollen lips and eyes filled with guilt.
“Oh, honey, don’t go,” my dad begged. “Not yet. Stay. Let’s give it one more night. I’d feel better if you were traveling during the day.”
Fuck you and your fucking whore.
“I’ve missed too many days already.”
My dad sighed, and then he stepped over toward me. He smelled like Judy when he hugged me, and it was enough to choke me up with bile again. “I love you, Daniella.”
“It’s Maci now,” I reminded him. I didn’t tell him I loved him back because in that moment, I hated him.
“Right. Maci.” He repeated my new name that wasn’t so new anymore with a sigh, like he hated that I changed my given name. “I wish I had some comforting words. I wish you wouldn’t go.”
“I have to.” I said the words impatiently because I was ready to get the hell out of this house and never look back. I stepped away from him and toward the door. “Bye,” I said as I let myself out.
I ran to my car and zoomed away as fast as I could. I didn’t even cry until I got to the highway.
CHAPTER FIVE
ETHAN
“A hundred bucks says I can get any chick Roadie Joe picks out in my dressing room before you can,” Mark said.
I nodded. “Deal. Except make it a thousand.”
Mark’s eyes widened. “A thousand?”
It marked the highest stake yet on our bets, but we’d been touring for a few years now. I was tired of the small wagers we’d started when we first started touring, back before we had any money in the bank and we’d worked gigs at Sevens to make rent.
Life had sure changed. I was twenty-five and on top of the world. Vail had made a name for itself—and a big name at that. The doors to all the women, parties, events, and drugs were open, and I stepped through them all without fail.
I was reminded of the past often—of the girl who vanished. It was always little things. The scent of vanilla. Christmas music. Innocence. It’s hard to explain why she had such an impact on me, but she did, and I was still paying the price of that.
I overcompensated by doing things that would help me forget. It always worked for a little while, in the moment, but when sobriety snuck its way back in, the sense of loss sometimes seemed greater than before.
It wasn’t just her. It was everything about my life up to that point. It was the agony of loneliness with the knowledge that no one had ever loved me, not really. Not my mother, and certainly not my father. My sister was about the only person who I could really call my family, but family’s just blood. The sense of family my brothers in Vail gave me was far stronger than anything I’d been given growing up.
We were on our first tour where we were the headliners. It was totally different being the ones in charge of the tour versus being the ones tagging along. It was more than a sense of accomplishment—it was a real, tangible way of showing the world that we weren’t fucking around. We were in this for the long haul. We caught a few lucky breaks, but we worked our way up and our second album blew away all our expectations. Grammy awards lined our shelves, fans packed our stadiums, and more money than I knew what to do with sat in my bank account.
Yet the strange ache that something was missing washed over me every time the scent of vanilla wafted into the room, every time some melody of a Christmas song spilled into my ears.
The second some chick with huge tits tipped the bottle of Jägermeister over my mouth, though, I forgot. I left the foreign feelings buried with the other ghosts of my past because that was where they needed to stay—buried. Forgotten.
We did our band huddle followed by more shots of Jäger, and then we took the stage.
The bright lights blinded me, but I didn’t need my sight to do what I was born to do. All I needed were the hickory sticks in my hands and the beat in my head.
I banged on my drums. I took out every ounce of aggression I felt on my kit as I pedaled the double bass and smashed the cymbals. I thrived on the deafening screams of the crowd when my drums went silent between songs and on the chorus of our most popular songs when I could hear the crowd singing along with every word Mark and I labored over crafting. It was there behind my drum set where I managed to forget everything else and just be myself, raw and real.
But as soon as our set was over, it was back to reality.
Actually, scratch that. It was back to the bet. Roadie Joe pointed out a lady in the front row as we took a break before the encore, and she was the target.
My heart raced as my eyes found her.
Long, brown hair. I couldn’t tell from backstage, but possibly brown eyes.
Was it her?
I looked in every crowd every night to see if she was there.
Surely she’d remember me, wouldn’t she? My former classmates at North Chicago High School loved to talk about how two of the men from Vail attended school there. It was what the school was known for now, and she’d attended that school up until the middle of her sophomore year. Certainly she was somewhere telling her friends she knew those boys as we walked across the stage to claim our first Grammy. Certainly she remembered that kiss.
Because I remembered her and the kiss I stole from her in a deserted high school hallway.
I still thought about it all the time, but I thought about it in the way you think about a great memory you know you’ll never get back. That’s all it was.
As I took my final bow, I tossed a drumstick to
the girl Joe had pointed out. I winked at her, and I watched as her eyes lit up.
She was mine, and so was that thousand bucks I’d bet Mark.
I ran backstage before Mark did and grabbed a different roadie, Paul, by the shoulder. He was one of the roadies who handed out backstage passes. “Girl in the front row, dark hair and holding a drumstick. Get her back to my dressing room. Twenty bucks in it for you.” I could sacrifice two percent of my payday for Paul.
He nodded because he knew the drill and then he took off to find her.
Mark grinned at me backstage. “We fucking killed it tonight, dude.”
I grinned back. He had no idea I’d already sent someone to get the girl. “Best set so far on this tour.”
Steve and James were standing right next to us. We’d already knocked the clichéd rock and roll part down. We were four single guys ready to celebrate a great show, and what better way to do that than with sex and drugs?
We all had separate dressing rooms this time around, and we all had our own showers—something I always needed immediately after a show. I’d get Paul to entertain the girl while I rinsed off the sweat from performing and then I’d ravage the brown-haired girl.
I preferred blondes, and Roadie Joe knew that. What he didn’t know, though, was that I preferred blondes because they didn’t remind me of the past.
Despite the fact that I still thought about her, I wouldn’t have changed anything.
So what if I’d have asked around and found her. What then?
It’s not like I was going to go out on the road and live my twenties on a tour bus while I was chained to some younger girl back home.
I was young and impressionable when my parents showed me that monogamy was a path I’d never walk down, and I was okay with that.
I had everything I needed, and I’d have the girl waiting behind door number one fill whatever void seemed to be speaking to me tonight.
Mark walked by me on his way to his own dressing room. “You get her in your room?” He shot me a sly smile, and if I wasn’t amped up on the adrenaline that came from walking off the stage just now, I might’ve decoded it to mean something more.
I set my hand on the doorknob. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
I opened the door as excitement coursed through me.
The room was empty.
I narrowed my eyes at Mark. “What the fuck did you do?”
He shrugged, and I followed him to the next door. He pulled open the door, and there sat the beauty from the front row. She clutched my drumstick in her hands as she eyed both of us nervously.
I shook my head. “How’d you do it?”
He grinned at the girl. “Be right in, babe.” He shut the door so only I could hear him. “You tried to buy Paul off for twenty? Fucking cheapskate.” He shook his head then opened the door and greeted the girl before he slammed it in my face.
Asshole.
“What’re you doing back here all by your lonesome?” A sultry voice was close to my ear, and even though I owed Mark a thousand bucks and lost tonight’s bet, I had a feeling I was still going to get mine tonight.
CHAPTER SIX
MACI
“I do!” I wasn’t sure how I managed to slur the three-letter sentence I just spoke, but I did.
Ha! I do.
I do I do I do.
I shouldn’t, but I did.
“Yep, I do, too.” Kai nodded. “I do so hard.” He leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth.
“You may now kiss your bride,” Elvis scrambled to say, but he was already kissing me.
I couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up from my throat as he kissed me in front of Elvis.
I just got married. This had to be the most spontaneous thing I ever did, but if Britney Spears could do it, so could I.
Maybe that was a bad comparison. Her Vegas marriage didn’t last very long. It was like less than two days.
What about Bruce Willis and Demi Moore? Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton? Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford.
Nope, all divorced.
Shit.
I glanced around at the photos on the wall as we made our way out to celebrate our nuptials, and one caught my eye. Jon Bon Jovi. Now I knew for a fact that he was still married. They had like a million kids and they were happy.
See? Celebrity marriages that started in Vegas could last.
Not that I was a celebrity. I was aiming for it, but I wasn’t there quite yet.
Getting married might throw a wrench in my revenge plans, but Kai had a good effect on me. He was kind and forgiving, and he taught me that I could be, too, if I tried hard enough.
The second we stepped outside into the summer heat of Las Vegas and car exhaust mixed with the stale air wafted in front of me, my stomach turned on me.
I ran over to some bushes and threw up the four Mai Tai’s I’d put down as Kai and I raced to the finish line.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and Kai was right there, rubbing my back and asking if I was okay.
Sure, yeah, I was fine. I was married now.
A married woman.
What the fuck had I done?
I thought back to the day I called him.
It was exactly a year after my mother’s funeral. It wasn’t a year after she died, but a year after I’d met Kai.
I’d spent the year focusing on my schoolwork, ignoring my father’s pleas to call him, and trying to find my new place in life as a motherless twenty-year-old.
I pushed myself by practicing music. I’d work on my vocals until my throat hurt then switch to piano until my fingers tingled.
I thought about the stranger who gave me hope more often than I should. He was a deejay, and I wondered if he dabbled in instruments at all. I had this crazy idea to start a band.
It was insane, I knew. I could hardly keep up with what I was doing, never mind adding more to my plate. But something inside of me told me he could help me. He’d helped me once before, and I had this strange feeling I couldn’t ignore.
So I’d stupidly dialed his number.
When he answered, I rambled. “You probably don’t remember me, but I’m the girl in the resale shop from a year ago and you picked me up off the floor and found me a dress. I just wanted to say thank you.”
Silence had met my introduction, and then he said, “Of course I remember you. I think about you all the time and wonder how you’re holding up.”
I chuckled. “Not well.”
“Is that why you’re calling?” he asked.
“Sort of.” I twisted my hands together nervously as I cradled my cell phone between my shoulder and my ear and paced the length of my small dorm room. “You said something that day that stuck with me. Well, more than a few things, if I’m being honest.”
“What did I say?”
I thought back to the girl crumbled on the floor of a store and the stranger who helped to lift her up again. “You said I couldn’t stop destiny. You said you were living proof that it’s possible to make it to the other side. And you said if I needed someone to talk to, you’d be there for me.”
He was quiet again.
“Your card says you’re a deejay. Any chance you play an instrument, too?”
He clears his throat. “I’ve dabbled in drums.”
Drums. Of course.
We didn’t form a band together until after I graduated from college. We moved to Los Angeles, where he had some friends, practiced a little, and scored some side gigs. He was still deejaying and I was working for a marketing department writing jingles.
I hadn’t been looking for a sexual relationship with him. Just friendship, and maybe music.
And now we were married.
But we were only married for four days.
Longer than Britney but not as long as Angelina.
The reason why we got divorced reignited my spark for revenge. I’d sort of let it go when I was with Kai. He’d convinced me that forgiveness was the way to go, but I never t
old him about Ethan Fuller.
Not until one drunken night four days after we got married.
“Truth or dare?” Benny asked me. Benny was Kai’s best friend and our bassist.
“Truth,” I said. I took another shot of tequila. The dares with this group were notoriously brutal, so instead of taking that route, I went for the truth. In this version of the game, that meant a shot of tequila before they asked the question.
This was my third round, so I was pretty toasted.
Benny pulled a paper from the bowl in the middle. We’d all written down truth questions and folded them into neat squares so what we were asked was always luck of the draw. “What would you change about your past?”
I cleared my throat. “I would never have let a boy allow me to change who I am.”
“Me?” Kai asked.
I shook my head. Tequila equaled truth, unfortunately. “A boy in high school.”
“How’d he change you?” he asked. All eyes in the room were on me. I shrugged. “I answered the question. Who’s next?”
Kai wasn’t the type of person who could let it go, though.
It’s not like this was the first warning sign in four days that we weren’t going to be married forever, but the final straw came about ten minutes after that.
He cornered me in the kitchen as I was refilling the peanut bowl.
“What happened in high school?” he asked.
I didn’t look up from my task. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You need to talk to me about it. Babe, I’m your husband.” He grabbed my arm by the bicep.
I snorted. I didn’t mean to—it just happened. “Because we got drunk in Vegas, Kai. Not because we’re in love and think this is going to last forever.”
He looked taken aback by my words, but I couldn’t keep living this lie. I didn’t love him—not the way you’re supposed to love someone you’re married to. Not with the all-consuming, fiery passion I wanted in my life.
